I've made a point of bringing this up in Discord a few times, but I am also a lover of character-based and relationship-focused discussions. The A-S-K thread wasn't a sterling example of what shipping threads can be, but I know this is something that 17S' culture has had issues with in the past. There's nothing more fun to me than having a chill, friendly conversation about characters and ships and plots and narrative arcs and stuff like that. Unfortunately, 17S hasn't been home to most of those discussions. They've happened elsewhere. But I think it'd be great if they happened here too.
I've had too many fandom friends say they don't feel like 17S is a place for people like them, the shippers, the character experts, the fanfic writers, the artists, the AU people. They get intimidated and think you've got to be a Realmatics expert and know at least 200 WoBs of the top of your head to post here, and I don't want that to be true. It's great that we have experts who really know the nitty-gritty of the cosmere in and out, and I think they're amazing resources for this site. But no one should feel like those are the only people who are welcome.
One of the things that both saddens and encourages me about what's happened with A-S-K is hearing how many people seem to be really wanting those kind of discussions too. I hear it both from people who were active and supportive of the thread, who feel sad that it's gone, because it felt like it was the one place they could talk about these kinds of things. And I hear it from people from people who really wanted a place to talk about those kinds of things, but didn't want to jump into A-S-K for whatever reason, and felt like they were stuck and had no other places to go.
That thread, for better or worse, agree or disagree, is done with for now. But I like this idea that maybe we'll get some new character-focused threads in the future and we can all have those cool, fun character or ship talks that apparently, a bunch of us have been wanting threads like that. I say, let's do it. It's silly for us to all sit around wishing someone else wanted to talk about this stuff. Let's just go for it instead of wishing!
Who are you, and what have you done with maxal?
I don't know what they've done with her, Kay, but I'm scared. Who is this new person????

I think my post was perhaps, a little unclear. This is not to say that we never moderate through PMs. As I said, we do! For many people and for many reasons. A lot of moderation happens privately rather than publicly, but, since it's not open for everyone to see, obviously people don't know about those cases. This just happened to be one that people noticed happened "off-screen" so to speak.
My point in talking about that experience wasn't to say that "my friend got private talks while strangers get public ones" because that's just not the case. I meant to say that in that case, because I know my friend well and we talk frequently, we were able to accomplish the moderation with a chill and friendly chat, because I knew she'd understand and listen even before I spoke to her. That's just not a luxury that we get with random users who we don't know. I have to tread more carefully when moderating people I don't know well because they don't know me and I don't know them. The kind of PM that I'd send to a user like that would be more calm, professional, and explanatory than the casual chat I can have with a friend where I can just swoop in and go "yo, fren, u went too far there, fix it."
If the person who gets a PM is a brand new user, I tend to be gentler, because I don't want their first experience on the Shard to be a scolding from authorities. More than likely with newbies, they just don't have a handle on the rules yet and some encouragement in the right direction is all it takes. If it's someone who's been around for a while and should know better, I can be a little stricter. There's not a "boilerplate" response for when something's wrong. The kind of response that I send as a moderator changes based on the person I'm talking to and the situation at hand.
I think perhaps the root of the issue is that while there's clear rules in place, there aren't necessarily delineated punishments for breaking them. Getting moderated on 17S isn't like getting a speeding ticket where it's "pay this amount if your 10mph over, pay this much if it was 25." There's not a chart somewhere that says doing this will get you a PM, or this will be a public warning, or this will get you mod queued, or this will get you banned. Dealing with situations is done on a case-by-case basis, and usually collectively. When a problem post is brought to our attention, the staff often talks together about how to handle it. Should it be deleted, or edited, or should one of us post a warning, or should that person be mod queued? It depends on a lot of factors. Has this person been trouble before? Are there multiple reports about this post, or is it just one person who might be overreacting a bit? Is this somewhere where making a statement about what's happening will help solve it best, or is it better to pull the person aside in private and see if they'll fix it quietly? Are there other people involved who also need to be seen to? Should they get PMs as well, or is it a problem that will shape up if just the main offender shapes up?
Personally, I think that flexibility helps the staff respond to problems more efficiently than a more rigid system would. It gives us the chance to use our discretion and take extenuating circumstances into account while we're sorting through what are usually tense situations with high emotions. Because of that, we can handle them in the way we think is going to get things settled rather than making it worse. I think there's some situations where there just isn't a great answer that's not going to upset people, so you pick the one that upsets the fewest, or the one that's going to be better for the site overall. And in those cases, when the backlash rolls in, you push up your sleeves and try to mediate and settle that too.
Like I said before, I'm sure we pick wrong sometimes. There's probably times where another method might have been more effective or better. But that can't always be helped. Conflicts are messy, no matter what, and that unpredictability of not knowing how people are going to respond to the things we do means often, we've got to take our best guess and go with it.
Maybe that staff-discretion method needs to be reconsidered. Personally, I think it's efficient and the wisest course of action, but if a majority of our users find it unfair or feel like the staff are attacking them for no reason, then that's something we need to consider. From what I've seen, I don't think that's the case. I think a lot of people are mostly okay with staff making decisions in how to handle things as they arise, but maybe I'm wrong about that. That's part of what discussions like this are for.

I think some of it comes back to that grab-bag of reactions idea. There's nothing wrong with members talking out their disagreements themselves in private, but I don't think very many do. A random user who disagrees with you might be worried that you'd blow up at them if they tried to say something privately. Conflict resolution's hard and scary. I understand why a lot of people prefer to just ping staff with a report and let a moderator deal with it. It's a little easier for us to talk to people because we've got some authority and well... mucking through the unfun parts of conflict resolution is part of our job. We have to deal with it, but members have the choice of whether they want to handle it themselves or take it up the chain of command.

Hey Dream, as the moderator in question, I'd like to give a little more insight into what happened there. I assume you're talking about Kogiopsis' brief foray into the Adolin-Shallan-Kaladin thread? Your retelling of events is fairly accurate, but I'd like to explain a bit of what happened behind the scenes. Yes, Kogi's a close personal friend of mine, has been for years.
She's long disliked some of the culture of discussions on 17S and, for the most part, avoids them. She has an aggressive personality, and it tends to come out strongly when she is engaged in a heated discussion, and she knows that a lot of times, that kind of argument is against the rules on 17S. The mix of 17S conversations making her blood pressure rise combined with the fact that she hits too hard when she's annoyed means that she stays away for the most part.
I didn't summon her as an attack dog or ask her to contribute. Frankly, I was downright shocked to see that she'd logged in here. We've got group chats on skype with other Cosmere fandom members, and some of us are on 17S and had been talking about our discussions in ASK, so she knew about the thread. But I certainly wasn't expecting her to go weigh in with her take on the matter.
She went too far, got carried away and her tone strayed into a territory that broke the rules. The moderation staff discussed it, agreed that the tone was too far, the post was hidden. I talked to her privately about it, and she said she had a pretty good idea of where she'd crossed the line and so, after editing the offending part out, the post was reinstated.
Now, I think you have a point about public chastisement in a way. There wasn't a call-out for Kogi in the thread for that event, but I think that has more to do with the fact that it was an issue that could be handled and fixed privately. And it's not just personal friends of staff who get that treatment. There's plenty of times where staff send private messages to members to try to fix posts or steer a conversation away if it looks like it's getting toxic. It doesn't always have to do with bias or relationship. Sometimes the person isn't too far out of line and just needs a staff nudge. Sometimes a public condemnation would throw an otherwise productive topic off-course and we don't want to interrupt for a staff announcement.
Public moderation has its place too though. In some cases, it can be good for other members to see what kind of behavior is out of line so that they can not make the same mistakes in the future. A lot of times, conflicts in threads aren't the fault of one single person, but rather a group of people getting heated and taking things too far, in which case, it's easier to just sit them all down right there in the thread and ask them to cool off. It depends on the situation, again.
In Kogi's case, I knew why she'd gone too far and I knew, as her friend, that she'd fix it when asked without throwing a fit. And yes, that is a benefit of being friends with someone, that you know them and it's easier to deal with stuff like that because you've got a previous relationship. I can't hit up RandomUser096 on Skype and say "hey buddy, I think you know where that went wrong, but I know you'll fix it because we're cool" sort of thing.
Most of the users here are strangers here, and that means I can't just saunter into their PMs here and know for certain they'll be reasonable. There's plenty of members who blow up and try to make things worse when a moderator steps in. There's some who will shout that you're being jerks to them specifically, peppered with swear words, and throw tantrums. But there's plenty of people who apologize and are fine. Sometimes it's a misunderstanding, and the person didn't realize how their post really came across. But when you don't know the person, it's a grab bag which one it's going to be. And odds are, when the person has already gone too far and broken the rules, there's a higher chance that they're going to be the furiously angry former type than the reasonable and apologetic latter type.
Maybe we, as staff, didn't handle that situation in the best way. Maybe we did. We did our best at the time to be fair about it. I'm sure there's other situations we could have handled better too, just as there's situations that were handled smoothly enough that other users never even knew about them. The staff are human. We make mistakes and we have biases on moderation things just as we have regular opinions on book things. We do try hard not to let those biases affect our moderation, but I'm sure it happens sometimes anyway, despite our intentions otherwise.
I think I speak for the staff when we say that we don't want the moderation team to be some dangerous, shadowy cabal that might swoop down out of nowhere and execute you in broad daylight, or send assassins in the night to murder you if you don't fall in line with our nefarious agenda. We're just fans, like you guys, who joined this site because we love Brandon's books and love talking about them with other fans. We've just got... a little more say in sorting things out when things start to go wrong.
I think maybe a thread like this is a good thing. I think it could be productive to talk about how moderation works on the site and maybe we as staff members can learn how to improve some things too. Like I said, we're not perfect. But we're trying our best. Maybe, after talking it all through, we can get even better.

My thoughts are that I'm just... tired of the discussion for the most part. I think there is a hang up here in this thread on objective truth, and it's an issue I've seen in other threads on the Shard too. Romance, characters, plots, and enjoyment thereof are so so so so deeply opinionated that trying to argue down to tacks over who's "right" just seems like an exercise in futility. You didn't like the plotline. I did. We can... just accept that those two realities are both true without one of us needing to be right or wrong about it. Just because a plot didn't work for you does not necessarily mean that it's flawed or worthless. Just because it's not the way you would have done it doesn't mean that it's objectively and unquestionably bad. Just because I thought it was great doesn't mean that everyone's going to see it that way.
See: The Last Jedi. No spoilers here, but I loved it. Probs one of my fave Star Wars movies of all time. One of my dear friends hated it and thought it was horrible storytelling, a disgusting mockery of a beloved franchise. We both talked about our thoughts and then we continued to be friends and it was fine. I didn't convince her that TLJ was a shining bastion that reworked a familiar narrative that needed refreshing and she didn't convince me that the plot was full of inexcusable holes and worthless storytelling decisions.
Same thing here. I'm not going to convince you that Shallan and Adolin are a good pairing and that Oathbringer showed this well. You're not going to convince me that it didn't. That's fine. What works for me might not work for you. I don't love everything Brandon does in his books, but I really loved this. You and many of the other upstanding Sharders in this thread didn't. That's cool.
I'm not going to be able to explain to you why the plot worked for me because it didn't work for you. These threads are cool when we get a difference of opinion and people get to say "I didn't read it that way, but it's interesting that you do" or "Oh, I hadn't thought of that angle, that changes my perspective." But when it's all about convincing the other side that you're right and they're wrong, it just gets onerous.
At least for me. Maybe other people really like that kind of discussion and they are welcome to it. But I'm good without it. Back in the golden days of WoK-only SA fandom, my closest friends were my shipping rivals. I didn't like Kalarin that much and they didn't like Shallarin. We still had great talks and fun amusing fake rivalries. Now we've both written things for our "former enemy ship" and we're still besties. Heck, at this point, I've probably written more fic for Kalarin than I ever wrote for Shallarin. Life's funny like that.
I think Adolin and Shallan are cute and supportive and work well together. I don't need Adolin to say outright, in his POV, how much he loves Shallan for me to be satisfied that he does. He's always been a character that is more externally read than internally. I think the book has adequate representation of Shallan and Adolin not only as a healthy couple but a couple who are truly attracted to one another. I think Shallan and Kaladin were a good example of mistaken physical attraction for romantic, and were an excellent subversion of typical romance narratives.
If you disagree, that's fine. But if y'all want to keep saying that because you disagree, it's because Brandon Sanderson is objectively and factually a bad writer who screwed it up and made a huge mistake, then... well I guess that's fine too, but it's not a conversation I'm really interested in pursuing. Weirdly enough, I'm not overly enthused about participating in conversations in which things I like are stated to be "unquestionably bad because it's not an opinion it's the truth and if you can't see that then you should convince me you're correct or concede that I am correct instead."
Nah. I got better things to do. Live your life, think your thoughts, ship your ships. I know I'm going to.

I mean, at this point, I'm aware of y'all's views on the matter and I've stated mine in long enough form as well. I'd just be repeating myself if I actually fell back into the Shaladin vs Shadolin debate, so I won't do so. I disagree with the interpretations regarding Shallan's personalities and what it means for Adolin vs what it means for Kaladin. I thought the choosing scene hit all the points it needed to and satisfactorily wrapped up this plot thread for the moment. Y'all didn't think that. That's all there is to it.

Both Kogi and I have written quite a bit of Kalarin, and there's others who have as well. AO3 lists 28 Kalarin fics. A large chunk of them either written to Kogi or gifted to her. (I wasn't kidding about her being the captain.) Personally I'm quite fond of this one of Kogi's, which was written before WoR came out. I'll self-plug my fluffy Kalarin wine tasting fic too while I'm at it.
As for Kadolin, there's 29 and yes, several of them are explicit. I'll let you scroll through the tag and filter the ratings yourself on that one. I'm sure there's other fics on tumblr or fanfiction.net, but I usually just stick with AO3 because it's so easy to find things.

What do you mean by "weren't addressed"? Shallan and Adolin have a conversation where Adolin's stunned that she doesn't want Kaladin and Shallan talks about how she was more physically attracted to him but doesn't think he's the right choice for her, and she's choosing Adolin. It's one of my favorite conversations in the book.
I see, discussion of her thing for Kaladin, I see Shallan explaining why she loves Adolin, and I see Adolin saying how hard it is for him to step aside, when he thinks that's what she wants even though he loves her, and I see him physically reciprocating her affection in the kiss, wanting to be close after that.
I mean, that convo is the deal-sealer for me. Choice made, Shadolin not Shalladin, and I think she picked the healthier of the two options, as well. The one that she matches with better.

Not to mention, the Kadolin was strong with this book. With as much as Adolin and Kaladin are expressing their love for each other, when Adolin starts thinking Shallan wants to choose Kaladin, his response is almost "Well I'm sad but who wouldn't choose Kaladin? Honestly, have you seen Kaladin? Kaladin is the best and also my favorite." Thank Harmony for the Kadolin ship, everyone.

Ah the curse of the moderator badge. Everything reads like an edict.
No one's shutting this topic down or saying that the discussion needs to be stopped. I'm not speaking for Chaos, but my response was meant not as a moderator shutting down discussion, but a beta reader who had insight on the process since that was a point that's been brought up. I've seen several of your responses mention early reviewers not having done enough for Adolin, and as one of them, came to give my perspective on that topic.
Just as you're allowed to have this discussion in an appropriate thread, so are those who don't agree with you.
Bolding mine, again, to point out the phrases that caught my eye in writing the response.
You spoke of beta readers not pointing out where Adolin was lacking in Oathbringer, but many betas were outspoken on Adolin's behalf, specifically requesting that he needed more viewpoints. Adolin wasn't ignored by the beta team and his plot wasn't missed. It was something commented on and improved, just not brought to the level that you would have wanted. You also spoke of wanting to see Brandon's responses to critics and wondering what his thoughts were on the contention, and I felt the Reddit quote did that as well, acknowledging that there was contention over the plot, but stating that he didn't feel it was flawed and was, in fact, very pleased with how it turned out.
That's why I added the response I did. Not to shut you down but to answer some of the questions you'd been asking and add more information on topics you were discussing.

I can clear up some of the beta reader front. Mostly because Brandon (and the beta team) have talked publicly about the process of the beta read and what things were influenced. For one, betas were outspoken about wanting more Adolin in the books, just not quite to the level that I think that Maxal would have wanted. To me, Oathbringer had enough plot threads that did big transformative character arcs and brought people to cruxes of conscience and character. No, Adolin wasn't one of them, but Adolin did have the privilege of participating in pretty much every major storyline even if he wasn't the focal point of it. The beta draft had much less Adolin, betas complained that they wanted more scenes specifically from his point of view and Brandon did that. The Galant scene in Part 1 was added wholesale in order to give Adolin an early viewpoint and let us into his head there.
Could the Sadeas murder plot have been a major plotline? Sure. Did it absolutely need to be? No, and I think it's fine that it wasn't. Is the book flawed or poorly constructed because that didn't become a major plot? In my opinion, it's not. Brandon picked what he did and didn't want to be a big deal and that one just wasn't picked. Epic fantasy series have problems with overcrowding and too many plots and characters. I think adding an Adolin plot in just because it would have been possible wouldn't have been a wise decision. And I assume Brandon agrees, because he didn't do it.
I'll pull this quote from Brandon in the Beta AMA:
(bolding is mine)
It's not that no betas brought up Adolin or the love triangle. It's certainly not that. We had huge discussions about the love triangle, and I have a feeling that the majority of betas who made it to the end wrote at least a paragraph on their thoughts regarding the development of the characters and the arc as a whole. We didn't all agree. Many betas liked it, many didn't, some liked the idea of taking it in different directions, others thought it was fine as is. I've said before I hated the triangle all the way through WoR and Oathbringer for fear that it was playing out in straight cliches. Seeing the ending made it work for me both in hindsight and because of some of the ways Brandon changed it in Oathbringer after beta comments. (I, for one, really liked the reinforcement of Shallan's separation with two different sides of her being interested in two different people. I thought that broke some of the cliche molds that I had been seeing.)
It's fine if the conclusion didn't work for you or if you felt it didn't play out right. But it's not because Oathbringer was a shoddy rush job that didn't get buffed up and edited the way it needed to be. The triangle was always going to be contentious and there will always be fans who wanted something out of a book and didn't get it. (I personally was in a bad place after Words of Radiance because that very thing happened to me there. That's another story though.) But this is the ending that Brandon likes and is proud of. He's pleased with the balance he's hit, even if there's still people who didn't like it. He got a lot of feedback on these parts of the book, probably moreso than anything else in Oathbringer, and he used that feedback to construct the ending that he wanted.
I think he nailed it. You don't have to, but you should understand that Brandon's not going to apologize for the way it turned out or try to redact it and "do better in the future." He liked this ending and he's going to stand behind that, even when other people don't agree.
P.S. This has nothing to do with A/S/K and this thread, but since it's in the quote I gotta brag a little bit that you know ya girl here had some influence in getting more of Renarin's powers in the book. Wasn't just that it was stuff I wanted to see as a Renarin fan, but it helped Renarin's plot to add the things that got added.

Yeah, I was speaking less to Adolin's motivations and more to the function of it. Adolin lashed out because he felt backed into a corner and saw no other way out. Sadeas was literally gloating about how nothing could stop him and Adolin knew that they'd lose any chance to bring him down with all the chaos of the Everstorm and the move to Urithiru. If there had been a legal way to bring Sadeas to justice, I think Adolin probably wouldn't have ended up feeling backed up into that corner the way he did. So, roundabout the failure of justice is what caused Sadeas' death, even though it wasn't Adolin's direct motivations at the time. And even though fulfilling justice wasn't Adolin's motivation, the killing served that purpose regardless, intent or no.

I'm just going to throw a quick response in here this time, not a line-by-line. I feel at this point I've pretty much talked out my position and I'll just end up repeating myself if I try to keep engaging. A girl can only have so many thoughts on one subject before it runs dry.
That said, I'll fess up that I misremembered the Skybreakers WoB and misquoted it. I should have looked up the actual thing but I thought I remembered it well enough off the top of my head. Silly Feather should know that she doesn't know WoBs as well as canon quotes. Embarrassing. Still, Skybreakers aside, I think the Sadeas situation was one where justice was failed by the system and required an outside correction, and Nale can bite me if he disagrees.
And the last point is about cliches. Yes, I dislike the Shalladin setup because it reads as very cliched to me, but this isn't just because I have a vendetta against the very concept of cliches and anything that remotely resembles a different story is bad. Rather, I dislike when plots feel contrived or formulaic and especially when they don't bring anything interesting. WoR didn't bring anything interesting to me to that plotline and it brought a whole lot of familiar and recycled points. The chasm scene in particular felt particularly egregious as a setup for sexual tension and bonding. Of course those two would be the two who fall into the chasm of course they would need to cuddle to stay warm and Kaladin gets all "aware of her in more ways of one." The follow up of them distractedly thinking of each other felt like it was just stacking up stock forbidden crush reactions all on top of each other.
I mean, it's been a while since I listened to the WoR Splintercast but I'm pretty sure my thought process along the plotline was "huh, Shallan and Kaladin? Did anyone really picture those two getting together?" moving into "uh this bickering and 'oh she's/he's the worst' is definitely turning UST-y" to "oh no... really... they're stranded alone together... I've read this fanfic before..." to "yep, there it is, all that dark heartfelt bonding because of course we gotta have all the cuddling and bonding" to "wow, okay now we're daydreaming about each other and doing this? uuuuuuugh please let this plotline stop happening to me."
I mean, we started off with mild confusion and it was only after it just. kept. going. with no interesting end in sight that I transitioned into annoyance and then true dislike towards the end. It was only later while I was thinking about why the storyline bothered me so much that I started realizing how much I felt they weren't good for each other and questioning that if that were the case and they had all these deepset issues, why Brandon would have chosen to shove them into the love interest lock step like he did. And so very strongly. So deeply unsubtle. Like getting whacked over the head with THIS IS SHALLAN AND KALADIN AND THEY ARE DOING A LOVE INTEREST ROMANCE PLOT NOW, THANK YOU.
Meanwhile I'm sitting through all of these scenes like.
Do Adolin and Shallan feel cliche to me? Not really. She gets excited about meeting him, they both get a little flustered when they meet for the first time, they go on a date and have a silly conversation, and then they kiss at the end because Shallan's been wanting to kiss him for a while. That WoR plotline doesn't read "cliche" to me. It just reads like two people who start dating and like each other. Adolin might be a prince, but his and Shallan's romance definitely isn't fairytale. If anything you could say it's a little too quiet and normal, whereas most romance plots have those big dramatic moments. But in real life, a lot of romances don't have the big dramatic moments. They're just two people who realize they really like each other.
Perhaps that's the real contrast here. Kaladin and Shallan get the big romance plots. They fight the chasmfiend together, they huddle for warmth, they bare their souls to each other and have this intense bonding experience. I totally understand why people ship Shallan/Kaladin, 100%. If those scenes felt legitimate and that connection felt real and true to you, then sure of course you'd ship it. They were the ones who got the set up. Shallan and Adolin is just kind of Nice™. It's the cute date, the handsome prince who's a bit goofy rather than the wild and passionate longing for dark broody darkeyes she's not supposed to have.
And in the end I think that's probably the point that Sanderson was trying to make, the twist he was hoping to execute. That sometimes the nice guy that you go on a few good dates with can be The One and sometimes the one that you go down the start of the wild and passionate forbidden love turns out to not be the right pick after all. The subversion makes the cliches work because when you get to the end, Brandon says, "In any other story, she would have picked the forbidden passionate one instead of the one she was 'supposed' to be with, but in this story, I'm going to show you why the opposite is going to happen and she ends up with Adolin instead."
And in the end, I like that little twist a lot.
I'm at the point where I'm not really trying to convince anybody. If you guys really think that there's gonna be way more on the love triangle in the books to come, well, the only thing to do is wait for another book and see what happens. I think it's pretty clearly resolved. But I've been wrong before, so maybe you guys will win out in the end.